[metal smith]

www.empiresmod.com

Okay, this is basically the first FPS/RTS mod on the source engine from valve. It is a free mod that you can play if you own a copy of half life 2: Deathmatch, or have half life 2 and have the source SDK.

Any rate, this is an FPS / RTS game. The game is semi modern meets WWII style combat. The story behind the game is more or less written by the community in a collaboration of stories based around the 2 factions of this game, the modern Brenodi Empire and the rebelling Northern Faction. The game is still in beta, and is currently on its 2.12 release. Updates are not as often as many people would like, but considering the game works well as it is, I have nothing to complain about, and would gladly pay for it if it was retail. Currently, the empires mod team is finishing up porting empires mod to the Orange Box release of the source engine, which will allow them to make certain additions to the game.

Right now, the game is fairly advanced for a mod. On regular maps, there is a commander who is voted in at the beginning of the round, and then the game progress to attacking and defending resource points on the map.

before I forget, there are 4 infantry classes in empires. Riflemen, which are experts in infantry combat, but also can carry a limited (2) amount of sticky bombs which stick to surfaces and cause heavy damage (like to vehicles). Scouts are currently the only class in the game with a scoped gun, but the gun is not an instant kill unless you get headshots. Scouts are currently being rebalanced to give them more purpose than they have. Engineers are probably the most important infantry units available. They can build buildings at twice the speed as regular units and can get upgrades to double their already doubled building speeds. They can also drop infantry and vehicle detection buildings, as well as turrets and walls, and even ammo crates. Last but not least is the grenadier. These guys have anti tank RPG's and mortars, as well as carry around up to 5 mines, and they can drop up to 8 mines at a time to destroy vehicles.

the maps are very large. If you can imagine a cs map like cs_office, and then think of that as one building in a city, that's how large the maps usually are.

Once the team has resources, they can then build other buildings, such as more barracks for spawn points, armories for ammo and to change their class. They can also have the com drop a vehicle factory to build vehicles. also buildable are radars which are used to research weapons, armors, and engines for the tanks, as well as a currently limited number of infantry upgrades.

Next, vehicles. Empires vehicles are very customizable. They have a weight limit, but other than that, whatever you can fit onto your tank, you can put on it. You can select the type of armor, the type of weapon, and the type of engine on your tank. There are a few different chassis of tanks you can build, both teams having different variations of the same things. there is a light class tank, a medium class tank, a heavy class tank, and an artillery class tank. Also, there is the APC or Armor Personal Carrier. These act as a mobile spawn point. They have more armor than a tank, but cannon equip cannons, only machine guns and grenade launchers. They are also larger and bulkier than many tanks.

That's about the quickest i can do an overview of the game.




Remember, this game is in beta 2.12. Currently, they are porting the mod to Orange Box. After that, they plan to introduce either 8th scale or 16th scale map compatibility, whichever is the next scale from what they are currently using ( I think they use 8th scale right now, and will be moving to 16th scale mapping). This is because they are also planning on adding aircraft into the game. A lot of coding I hear is done for the aircraft, but the mod has had problems recruiting modelers. There is also a limited amount of maps released for the mod, due to the lack of skilled mappers. Currently, there are around 10~ maps including in the initial download of the mod, and a handful of maps created by others. around 3 maps are decent that I can think of off of the top of my head.

Anyhow, check out this mod, see if you like it. It is unique in many ways, both being one of the few rts/fps games in existence, and being in beta still. There are usually 2 full servers at peak times, 1 mostly filled other times. The mod community is about evenly split between Americas and European players, making it difficult sometimes for people to play in the currently full servers (european servers are full half the time, US servers full other half.) Overall, a wonderful mod, with most of the kinks worked out.







and if anyone has played this mod before and thought it was too laggy, the 2.0 update reduced the lag by a significant amount, even for people with somewhat mediocre systems.